Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau
It is a cliché that time is the most precious thing that we have. There are umpteen articles, books and TED talks about how to use it better. What makes it difficult is knowing exactly how to do that.
A framework that I find helpful for its simplicity is thinking about the time I spend on different tasks as falling into one of three categories:(
(1) Investment: things you do which have a long-term benefit and help you meet your long-term goals. Learning a new skill is investment. Networking and meeting interesting people is investment. Spending time doing things with your loved ones is an investment.
(2) Maintenance: things you do primarily to avoid something bad happening. Paying your bills, sorting out your insurance, washing the car, doing the laundry, filing your documents in the right way, etc. We can usually put maintenance off for a while, but after a certain point not attending to the necessities of life tends to catch up on you.
(3) Consumption: Things you do which neither have a long-term benefit, or help you avoid something bad. This is usually something enjoyable, like watching TV or a sports event. But it can also be compulsive activities or wasted time – using social media, spending time with people you don’t like or doing things you don’t like.
Of course, nothing is quite that simple: reading a good novel, or watching a great TV show can be enriching. With the wrong mindset, many important tasks that are investments in our long-term health and happiness – like exercise, time for reflection, sleep etc. – can become maintenance tasks.
Not all investment opportunities are the same. Whether you choose to learn Mandarin or mathematics at a particular point in time should depend very much on what skills you need and what this knowledge will allow you to do.
And investment always comes with an opportunity cost. Time spent with your friends and family is time not spent learning new skills – and vice versa.
Nonetheless, these three categories help us think about how we use our time and whether we are building for the future. It suggests a few things are important to get the most out of your time:
- Minimise consumption so you can maximise time spent on focussed ‘investment’ tasks. As a general rule you want to spend as much time building for the future as you can, and you want to focus this effort where the long-term rewards are greatest (hint: they will be where your efforts are compounded over time).
The easiest way to do this is to cut out wasted time. And the easiest way to identify time-wasting tasks is to ask yourself: what do I achieve in the long-term when I do X? For many activities the answer is ‘nothing’! These are things that you should cut out and turn into investment time as much as possible.
In doing this, it’s important to distinguish between genuine time wasting, and things which have a long-term payoff. Sometimes the incremental benefits of what we do are hard to perceive, but there is a long-term value. This is often true of learning, so it’s important to think about the long-term, rather than the short-term benefit.
- ‘Outsource’ and ‘streamline’ as much maintenance as you can. Life has a way of piling up things to do. And generally the more diligent we are at doing things, the easier it is to find additional tasks. Maintenance tasks are often boring, but a bigger problem is that because they give us a sense of achievement we can prioritise them over investment that is more difficult or has an uncertain payoff.
When I go to wash the dishes I know: (1) I can do it, (2) what the outcome will be and (3) that I will have ticked a box. And it’s important. But if we only ever do maintenance tasks we simply get good at ticking boxes without achieving any of the things that we think are most importance.
So there are two things you need to do to reduce maintenance. The first is simply to find someone or something else to do the task. You might be able to find a way to reduce the time you take per task by investing in the right equipment (e.g. a dishwasher!). The second thing is to outsource maintenance. For example, can you afford to hire a cleaner? Can you delegate better to more junior colleagues?
Outsourcing isn’t always possible, so you also need to think about whether a particular task can be streamlined – i.e. re-designed so that there is less time spent on all or part of it. This might be through saving up a particular task and doing a lot in one go (this works better for some things than others). The other way to use time better is by doing something of greater value while you do your main task – a basic example is listening to a podcast while you do the dishes.
It’s also worth asking whether you need to do a particular task at all – as it’s very easy to get into the habit of busywork. If you’re able to, try not doing something for a while and see what happens.
Turn ‘maintenance’ into ‘investment’ as much as possible. Our perceptions play a big role in what category a task falls into. There are lots of maintenance tasks which can be a chore or a pleasure depending on how you choose to look at them: exercising, cooking healthy food, looking after the kids. All of these things have a long-term benefit which can be lost if we don’t approach them with a positive perspective.
- Choose good ‘consumption’ over time-wasting. There is a difference between experiences consumption that is meaningful and important, and time-wasting, which often leaves us feeling worse than when we started. By all means, read that good novel, watch that well-reviewed film, and go to the show you’ve been meaning to see.
You can use this framework across your life as a whole or in different parts of it – e.g. at work. I’ve found this approach particularly helpful to think about what work tasks I choose to prioritise and how I manage my time.
The point of this framework is not that it gives all of the answers, but it provides a helpful way to think about the things you are doing, and decide which things are the most valuable. You won’t ever get rid of all maintenance tasks, but if you aren’t dedicating enough time to investment, it is very difficult to make meaningful positive change over time.
